Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Houses of Hawk Run Hollow House #6- I managed to work on this for an evening or two and made some progress on the house and fence, although I admit its a little hard to see. I'll be at this one for a while, folks, so you're going to be seeing lots more of it!

JBW Stocking on Celery Gingham Graziano linen. This has been really fun to stitch on. And its also really fun to thread your needle and stitch along your merry way until the end of the thread! I'm not using the suggested GAST or WDW for this one, just good ol' plain DMC, I didn't think I needed to use a variegated floss with the gingham fabric. I'm liking this one so well, I'm even entertaining the thought of doing it in red also! Crazy, I know, but I'm still anxiously awaiting the JCS Ornie issue, which hasn't arrived yet on any newstands that I have found, so I'm seriously Christmas deprived these days.

And I'm nearing the end of my Thanksgiving Turkey! I do love Prairie Schooler designs so much! This is from Book 93 called Harvest Time and I may just get it finished in time for our Thanksgiving which is on October 8, a little too early in the year to be thinking of it when I really want to turn my a/c back on, its 27 degrees C in the house right now and hot-hot-hot! But I'm sure I'll be much more in the mood in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile all my WIP's are getting tossed aside tonight as I really need to sort something out for the SBEBB Hallowe'en exchange. On Monday nights I have Foster parent training and Tuesday nights a study group, so I can't wait for tonight to roll around so I can put my feet up with some stitching and watch some of the new programs and series premieres!

Monday, September 24, 2007

I don't even know how to begin to thank Sue for her amazing generosity! I won her blog contest a few weeks back (Redwitch's Stitch n Bitch) and she so kindly wanted to send me something as a gift. She asked me for a wish list so I sent her a list of a couple of things that I had my eye on recently and then told me that a package would be arriving shortly from one of the on-line shops! Isn't that incredible! So of course I had to stalk the mail man as patience is definitely not a strong suit of mine, as I couldn't wait to see which goodie she had decided to pick from my list to send to me.

My package arrived today....or rather box, and I eagerly ran home with it, tugging poor little Stu along on his tired little legs (its a hot one out there again - Autumn weather has not yet arrived here) and imagine my great surprise when I found not one of the items on my list but all 4!!!! Wow- I was definitely shell shocked! I'm so touched by the neverending kindness and generosity of stitchers out here world wide and in our little blog-osphere, it never ceases to amaze, surprise and delight me.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The squares arrived from Carol, my partner in Round 2 of the Fair and Square Exchange. She stitched an older freebie design from the Prairie Schooler, and one of my favourite designers! She said she chose a house design, because we are also in a neighbourhood round robin together. Isn't this a sweet design and the colours are just right for this time of year too, very autumn-y.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Thank you for all your good wishes for Nick's headache. He is still complaining of a slight one so its not completely gone, but better. I had him to see my sister who is a massage therapist and while that helped, it didn't take his headache away. So he finally relented and saw the doctor and she gave him some anti inflammatories and that seemed to work some magic finally. Let's keep our fingers crossed that going back to school tomorrow doesn't make it worse!

I finished another RR yesterday, this time my Eastenders' Neighbourhood, that makes 2 RR finishes in 2 weeks. I won't post a picture yet until I pass it off next week at our get-together, but I will mention that there are alpaca in this one! I worked on Marg's and we relentlessly tease her about starting an alpaca farm when she and her hubby retire!

So to reward myself for my RR finishes, I have a new start as of last night (and also because the fabric I ordered finally came in the mail this week too :-) JBW Designs French Country ~ Stocking. I ordered the #28 count Graziano linen in the celery-white gingham combination. I hadn't tried this linen before and I really liked the green over the red. But I'm just using DMC and not the GAST thread.

Carol let me know she received my blocks for the Fair and Square exchange. I had fun stitching this square for her. It was a design from Sweetheart Tree from the June issue of The Gift of Stitching and fit perfectly in the 50x50 square limit. Sign-ups are being taken for Round #3 of the exchange. The link is in my side bar on the right hand side of my blog for more info. Please join us!!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

I finished my house in Leslie's neighbourhood...and a little early too! I hate deadlines, I hate the pressure, so I couldn't wait to get this one done before the October 1st mail-out date. The house came from a Jeremiah Junction special edition magazine and I loved the picture of it. I was merrily stitching away when I suddenly realized that it was starting to not look like the picture at all. It was much more orange than the red that I remembered the picture looking like. I guess it was originally stitched in Anchor floss and I used the DMC conversion so it really drastically changed what I working with. So quite a bit of brick frogging later, I reworked the colours and came up with something that suited me much better. I hope Leslie likes it!

My poor Nick has been suffering with his third day of headaches. I really have no idea what to do for him at this point. We have his new glasses on order and Advil do not seem to be working for him. It doesn't seem to be his allergies and he is cringing at the thought of going to the walk-in clinic, but I'm at a loss as to what to do next. And hubby and I have tickets for the Blue Jay ball game in Toronto tonight. I hate the thought of leaving him and Kris on their own tonight when he's like this. Ah, the joys of motherhood!

Thursday, September 06, 2007

I received a huge package in the mail late yesterday afternoon from my exchange partner for the SBEBB What's the Buzz Exchange. It was sent from Jeanne from Willow Tree Stitching and she did an absolutely fantastic job with everything. I opened up the package to first find a mesh project back, perfectly suited for the exchange with a strip of bee skeps fabric on the front, which she had made herself! And inside were endless goodies, including a package of Jelly Belly's, a lovely quilt themed magnetic note pad, a card which she had also made from fabric, and of course the pièce de résistance, a beautiful pinkeep and scissorfob with a lovely pair of Gingher scissors attached.

Jeanne commented that she used nail polish on the pinheads so that it better matched the pinkeep. That much attention to detail is amazing to me!

Jeanne's stitching and finishing is exquisite! I am in awe of all her crafting abilities, sewing, cardmaking, stitching, finishing, cordmaking.....wow! And I feel truly spoiled! Thank you Jeanne, so much for such a wonderful package! Your crafting talents are awesome!!

I received a message from Cathy that she received my exchange that I had sent to her. I stitched a Shepherd's Bush design and made it into a little pillow ornament. I really think I need to polish up my finishing skills....

Monday, September 03, 2007

We are enjoying a lovely 3 day weekend with Monday being Labour Day here and the weather has been perfect! It was so hard to come back from the cottage, it was just so nice to enjoy what feels like the final few days of summer. I won't be back to the cottage for the next few weekends, so I know the next time I go back, the leaves will have started to change colour.

I was able to get in lots of stitching time and I couldn't resist working on Peaches from Little House Needleworks. I actually started this on our summer vacation and put the last few stitches in today. These are such sweet little designs! The fabric you see with it is part of the finishing kit, along with the ribbon and the linen, that I ordered from Mary Kathryn at Ehandcrafts Online. She provides such a wonderful service putting these kits together for you and it makes it so much easier to finish too. I have a couple other LHN kits in my stash, I'm so tempted to start another one now.

Tomorrow is the start of school for us so always an exciting day, the kids are looking forwards to getting back into their routine and seeing all their friends again, and I'm looking forwards to it too :-D